Archive for April, 2009

Marcus Gee is incorrect if he thinks that “the hopes for real peace are faint” until the Islamic world accepts Israel’s right to exist and it’s peoples right to live in peace and security. Unless these things happen the prospect of real peace isn’t faint, it’s non-existent. There is no possibility of real peace unless the Islamic world changes it’s attitude towards Israel first.

Until that occurs the violence and suffering will continue on ad infinitum to everyone’s detriment because the Islamic world will simply not alter it’s behaviour. The first thing anyone who is really interested in peace in the Middle East would work towards is bringing that change about.

How can there be peace if Israelis have to constantly worry about the survival of the State and be subjected to attacks that may kill or maim them at any time? There can’t be. How can the Islamic world change it’s behaviour if the underlying attitudes don’t change? It can’t.

What is the difference between the Americans destroying Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities because they pose a threat to the United States and the Israelis destoying Iran’s nuclear capabilities because they pose a threat to Israel?

The boycott of the United Nations Conference On Racism and delegates walking out of Ahmadinejad’s speech are both more than justified. These actions are to be applauded and celebrated as well.

They mean that perpetrators of hatred and racism at the UN are being exposed for what they are now and for what they have always been in all societies: vicious, ignorant, small-minded, insecure liars and hypocrites who in this case stoop to no ends to villify and demonize all things Israeli, American and Western, including shameless historical revisionism. The actions also mean that the West is finally beginning to wake up and is no longer willing to countenance such blatant nonsense.

These are surely very good things indeed. The perpetrators racist attitudes are a major impediment to peace and stability in the Middle East and the sooner they are discredited and dispensed with the better.

President Obama’s performance on the international stage has been very questionable to date. His actions have been most disconcerting indeed. Organizations and regimes that would bring about our demise are beginning to get a very clear picture of the man and this is something we should be deeply concerned about.

They see a President who regularly denigrates and apologizes for most things American, who believes in soft power above all in spite of the lessons of history and inherent dangers in this, who has a tendency to micro manage and whose naivete’ and inexperience in international affairs can be taken advantage of.

The American President and de facto leader of the free world has to be proud of his country and stand up for it and this he has failed to do. He must fully recognize America’s virtues, strengths and preeminent place in the world and play to them in his dealings with all concerned. Being conciliatory is fine. Being dismissive and subservient is not. If change and security for everyone come at all they will come through the exersize of power and strength, not through displays of weakness and mea culpas.

The jury is still out and it is entirely possible that Obama will grow into the job and become one of the great Presidents in the history of the United States. I hope this happens. I also hope he learns the lessons he has to very quickly and that he inadvertently doesn’t send us all to hell in a handbasket in the meantime.

After all, rhetoric and force of personality will only go so far in this nasty world we live in.

Countries that depend on the United States for protection must be very worried right now. If the Americans are unwilling or unable to stop the North Koreans from threatening them with nuclear weapons, why should anyone else feel the U.S. would come to their assistance if they were attacked? If there isn’t an immediate, forthright, unambiguos response to the North Korean provocation how can the Japanese or South Koreans or Israelis or Taiwanese or anyone else, including Canadians and Europeans I might add, really believe in the Americans anymore?

This lack of belief and confidence would make the world a much more dangerous place because it means that countries would act unilaterally militarily in the name of self preservation. It would also embolden terrorist regimes and organizations that would like nothing more than to bring about our demise and would do so in a heartbeat if they could.

The last thing the world needs is a weak America that does not take serious measures on behalf of itself or it’s allies. It is naive and dangerous to think otherwise. Rhetoric is not enough. For everyone’s sake the United States should see to it that North Korea’s nuclear capability is eliminated immediately.

George Galloway and his apologists are most certainly hypocrites. On the one hand he vehemently criticizes the Canadian government when it refuses to allow a foreign national from Britain, him, to speak in Canada. On the other, he led a campaign to keep far right wing politician Jean Marie Le Pen, a French foreign national, from speaking in the U.K. in 2004. Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who has been severely critical of Islamic fundamentalism, has also prevented from speaking in Britain. It’s not hard to find many other contradictions in his career either.

It doesn’t get any more hypocritical than that. Galloway and his crowd didn’t like what Le Pen and Wilders were going to say so keeping them out of Britain was perfectly legitimate as far as they were concerned. However, when Canada hoisted him on his own petard it was an entirely different story.

Hypocrisy, thy name is George.

Nevertheless, free speech is paramount and indivisible and our government should have let him in the country and allowed him to speak here. Our democratic institutions were diminished when it decided not to do so and a very dangerous precedent was also set. After all, if the government of the day can keep out one speaker it doesn’t like it can keep out anyone that expresses views it doesn’t agrre with. Some democracy that is.

As I said in an earlier piece ” Let him in, let him speak and arrest and prosecute him if he violates any of our hate laws.”

The Arab world, including Palestinians, are the ones that should be held accountable for the lamentable situation in the Middle East, a situation which is entirely unnecessary. Israel’s actions are predicated on one thing and one thing only: survival in an extremely hostile environment. Arab actions are predicated on Israel’s destruction. It has never been any different.

Palestinians could have had their own state and there could have been peace and prosperity for all generations ago if not for Arab intransigence. Indeed, peace would come quickly and Palestinian lives would improve exponentially if the Arab world truly recognized Israel’s right to exist and stopped trying to destroy it. Their failure to do so is the real immorality.

Nothing will change until they do and everything will change when they do. In the meantime, Israel will do what it needs to to survive, like any other nation.